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Food security in India The focus on accelerated foodgrains production on a sustainable basis and free trade in grains would

help create massive employment and reduce the incidence of poverty in rural areas. INDIA AT present finds itself in the midst of a paradoxical situation: endemic masshunger coexisting with the mounting foodgrain stocks. The foodgrain stocks available with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) stand at an all time high of 62 million tonnes against an annual requirement of around 20 million tonnes for ensuring food security. Still, an estimated 200 million people are underfed and 50 million on the brink of starvation, resulting in starvation deaths. The paradox lies in the inherent flaws in the existing policy and implementation bottlenecks. Challenges ahead India's food security policy has a laudable objective to ensure availability of foodgrains to the common people at an affordable price and it has enabled the poor to have access to food where none existed. The policy has focused essentially on growth in agriculture production (once India used to import foodgrains) and on support price for procurement and maintenance of rice and wheat stocks. The responsibility for procuring and stocking of foodgrains lies with the FCI and for distribution with the public distribution system (PDS). Minimum support price: The FCI procures foodgrains from the farmers at the government announced minimum support price (MSP). The MSP should ideally be at

a level where the procurement by FCI and the offtake from it are balanced. However, under continuous pressure from the powerful farmers lobby, the government has been raising the MSP and it has now become higher than what the market offers to the farmers. Also, with quality norms in the procured grains not strictly observed, farmers pressurise the FCI to procure grains beyond its procurement target and carrying capacity. The MSP has now become more of a procurement price rather than being a support price to ensure minimum production. The rich farmers and traders have cornered most of the benefits under the support price policy. The small farmers lack access to FCI and being steeped in poverty resort to distress selling. Constricted warehousing facility has further aggravated their miseries. At times, the same farmers later pay more to buy it from PDS. Input subsidies: Over the years, to keep foodgrain prices at affordable levels for the poor, the government has been imposing restrictions on free trade in foodgrains. This has suppressed foodgrain prices in the local market, where the farmers sell a part of their produce and as compensation, they are provided subsidies on agriculture inputs such as fertilizers, power and water. These subsidies have now reached unsustainable levels and also led to large scale inefficiencies in the use of these scarce inputs. Overuse of fertilizer and water has led to waterlogging, salinity, depletion of vital micronutrients in the soil, and reduced fertility. The high subsidies have come at the expense of public investments in the critical agriculture infrastructure, thereby reducing agriculture productivity. Besides the high MSP, input subsidies and committed FCI purchases have distorted the cropping pattern with wheat and paddy crops being grown more for the MSP they fetch, despite therebeing relatively less

demand for them. Punjab and Haryana are classic examples here. This has also led to a serious imbalance in inter-crop parities despite no significant increase in the yield of wheat and paddy. Issue price: The people are divided into two categories: below poverty line (BPL) and above poverty line (APL), with the issue price being different for each category. However, this categorisation is imperfect and a number of deserving poor have been excluded from the BPL fold. Moreover, some of the so called APL slip back to BPL, say with failure of even one crop and it is administratively difficult to accommodate such shifts. To reduce the fiscal deficit, the government has sought to curtail the food subsidy bill by raising the issue price of foodgrains and linking it to the economic cost at which the FCI supplies foodgrains to the PDS. The economic cost comprises the cost of procurement, that is, MSP, storage, transportation and administration and is high mainly because of the artificially inflated MSP and also due to the operational inefficiencies of the FCI. This has pushed the issue price to APL category higher than the market rates and to BPL category beyond their purchasing power, resulting in plummeting of offtake from the PDS. Also, the low quality of PDS grains and the poor service at PDS shops have forced many people to switchover to market, which offers better quality grains, allows purchase on credit and ensures flexibility to purchase in small quantities.

Also, the high-priced, low-quality Indian rice and wheat find little place in the international market. Recently, two Indian consignments were rejected even by Iraq on quality considerations. The result is bulging stocks with FCI amidst widespread starvation. Market demand: The PDS entitlement meets only around 25 per cent of the total foodgrain requirement of a BPL family and it has to depend more on the market for meeting its needs. Also with the APL families essentially opting for market purchases, the market demand has risen. However, the massive FCI procurement has crowded out the market supplies, resulting in a relative rise in rates. The poor are the most hurt in this bargain. Food-for-work scheme: The government is running food-for-work scheme to give purchasing power to the poor who get paid for their labour in cash and foodgrains. The scheme is, however, not successful, since the Central Government is required to meet only the foodgrain component and the cash strapped States are expected to meet the cash component (almost 50 per cent of the total expenditure). In many States the scheme has even failed to take off. Suggested recommendations There is a need to shift from the existing expensive, inefficient and corruption ridden institutional arrangements to those that will ensure cheap delivery of requisite quality grains in a transparent manner and are self-targeting.

Futures market and free trade: The present system marked by input subsidies and high MSP should be phased out. To avoid wide fluctuations in prices and prevent distress selling by small farmers, futures market can be encouraged. Improved communication systems through the use of information technology may help farmers get a better deal for their produce. Crop insurance schemes can be promoted with government meeting a major part of the insurance premium to protect the farmers against natural calamities. To start with, all restrictions on foodgrains regarding inter-State movement, stocking, exports and institutional credit and trade financing should be renounced. Free trade will help make-up the difference between production and consumption needs, reduce supply variability, increase efficiency in resource-use and permit production in regions more suited to it. Food-for-education programme: To achieve cent per cent literacy, the food security need can be productively linked to increased enrolment in schools. With the phasing out of PDS, food coupons may be issued to poor people depending on their entitlement. Modified food-for-work scheme/ direct subsidies: With rationalisation of input subsidies and MSP, the Central Government will be left with sufficient funds, which may be given as grants to each State depending on the number of poor.

The State government will in turn distribute the grants to the village bodies, which can decide on the list of essential infrastructure work the village needs and allow every needy villager to contribute through his labour and get paid in food coupons and cash. Community grain storage banks: The FCI can be gradually dismantled and procurement decentralised through the creation of foodgrain banks in each block/ village of the district, from which people may get subsidised foodgrains against food coupons. The food coupons can be numbered serially to avoid frauds. The grain storage facilities can be created within two years under the existing rural development schemes and the initial lot of grains can come from the existing FCI stocks. If culturally acceptable, the possibility of relatively cheap coarse grains, like bajara and ragi and nutritional grains like millets and pulses meeting the nutritional needs of the people can also be explored. This will not only enlarge the food basket but also prevent such locally adapted grains from becoming extinct. The community can be authorised to manage the food banks. This decentralised management will improve the delivery of entitlements, reduce handling and transport costs and eliminate corruption, thereby bringing down the issue price substantially. To enforce efficiency in grain banks operation, people can also be given an option to obtain foodgrains against food coupons from the open market, if the rates in the grain banks are higher, quality is poor or services are deficient. A fund can be set up to reimburse the food retailers for the presented coupons. This competition will lead to constant improvement and lower prices. It must also be mandatory to maintain a small buffer stock at the State level, to deal with exigencies.

Enhancing agriculture productivity: The government, through investments in vital agriculture infrastructure, credit linkages and encouraging the use of latest techniques, motivate each district/ block to achieve local self-sufficiency in foodgrain production. However, instead of concentrating only on rice or wheat, the food crop with a potential in the area must be encouraged. Creation of necessary infrastructure like irrigation facilities will also simulate private investments in agriculture. The focus on accelerated foodgrains production on a sustainable basis and free trade in grains would help create massive employment and reduce the incidence of poverty in rural areas. This will lead to faster economic growth and give purchasing power to the people. A five-year transitory period may be allowed while implementing these. Thus, India can achieve food security in the real sense and in a realistic timeframe.